THE GEOGRAPHY OF FOOD-CONSUMPTION - A REVIEW

Food is central to human survival; its production still employs 45% of the world's economically active population and an unknown but significant proportion are engaged in the processing of the raw materials produced on farms, in wholesale and retail distribution and in the catering industries. Add to this the time spent cooking in private households and it is clear that the production and preparation of food engages a majority of the working time of the world's population. Hence it is not surprising that food has produced a very large literature in nearly all academic disciplines. While geographers have written much about the production of food, they have made relatively few contributions to the study of food consumption, although the study of consumption has attracted attention recently in other fields of geography (Jackson and Thrift, 1995). This article reviews the work that has been done - by geographers and nongeographers - about the geography of food consumption.